Recording and played-back devices utilized in toys, books and other educational items have become increasingly popular in the last decade and are now a dominant feature of the Christmas season. Items of this nature include books, animals and displays that play back messages, music, or animal sounds, etc. which have been prerecorded in read-only memory chips (ROM). This type of device of course cannot be re-programmed, and although it may have several alternative messages, they cannot be overwritten or changed.
There are older toys and the like which enable the owner to record messages, for example on a tape cassette in a tape player housed within the toy, to be played back later by a child. Though this non-volatile memory is effective in recording and subsequently playing back a message, it is of course rather cumbersome for the purpose, being mechanical and unnecessarily having a number of moving parts.
Yet another gift item or novelty is one which can repeat back something spoken to it or another noise delivered to it immediately after the audio input. These devices, such as parrots which will repeat the child's words after the child says them, utilize digital RAM chips, which are of course volatile memory devices and cannot retain the message when powered down, which is why they will only repeat the message immediately after it is input into the device. However, this system does have the advantage of being overwritable innumerable times.
The final development of such a trend would be a gift item such as a stuffed animal which has all of the advantages of the above-stated devices incorporated into a single unit.